Cricket Desmarais is a visual and performing artist, yoga, art, & dance instructor, media consultant, & a creative and commercial writer who received an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry with Dance Education studies from NYU, where she had the honor & pleasure of studying with Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell, Marie Howe, Philip Levine, Donald Hall, Jean Valentine, & Robert Bly. Her undergraduate heroes at the University of New Hampshire were Charles Simic & McKeel McBride, who helped pave the way to her belief that a life can be lived with poetry at its heart.

She one of six studio artists at The Studios of Key West, where she paints, writes, & teaches yoga & art workshops, & is a performer & teacher with Dance Key West, facilitating dance improv & Autism Movement Therapy classes in the community & at Key West Theater.

Her visual art has been exhibited in group and solo shows in Key West & New York City & she is the recipient of many grants & awards, including a New York Times Fellowship, The Key West Writer’s Guild Award, & The Key West Literary Seminar Liz Lear Scholarship Award.

Her current work in all genres explores the desire to bring order & space to the narratives of the human psyche and to find intimacy and comfort in the macro & micro of the island’s flora, fauna, & marine life. Most of her art-making efforts generally begin as a big particular that gives way to a blend of improvisation & Wabi-sabi, a Japanese worldview that centers on three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, & nothing is perfect.

She lives in Key West, Florida with her two daughters, 2 cats, & dog, & loves mango season best of all.